


Iron Maiden

by dark_roast



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-15
Updated: 2006-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty Sentences About Metallicar<br/>Mild Season One spoilers, some AU and futurefic; and lots of run-on sentences.</p><p>This fic was written for the <b><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/1character">1character</a></b> challenge. The idea was to write fifty sentences about a single character, using a table of numbered words created by the mod. My theme set table was <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/1character/412.html">Epsilon</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Maiden

**Hood**  
John Winchester huddles on the hood of his car, holding his children tightly as he watches the flames devour his home, just like his wife.

**Buzz**  
Dean bangs the sweating empty on the scarred table, sending it spinning crookedly and smashing to the floor, punctuating his drunken declaration of, "One more for the road, Sammy!"

**Wish**  
He frisks himself for the umpteenth time anyway: jacket, jeans, shirt pocket – all empty – then he reaches the parking lot to discover his car gone, shotguns and crossbows scattered across the asphalt, and a gorgeous dark-eyed brunette shyly fingering the bumper of a yellow XTerra in an adjacent space – and that's when Dean remembers he left the monkey's paw in the glove compartment for safekeeping.

**Seasons**  
Sweeping the snow in with him when he slams the door, Dean loops a green, tree-shaped air freshener over the rear-view mirror, and as he says, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!" the sharp smell of fake pine fills the chilly car.

** Threat**  
She knows the rules: driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole, vehicle doesn't get a vote, and one of these days, she's going to dump her transmission right in the road, just to piss him off.

**Portrait**  
He believes he lost it miles and miles behind, but it dropped out of his wallet and slid into the gap between the seat cushions, a creased, dirty and dog-eared frozen glimpse of how stupid he was, once upon a time.

**Loud**  
"Turn it down – I can't hear myself think," Sam says, and then his face changes, as he realizes this might not be a bad thing.

**Energy**  
"You know, this car gets about three miles to the gallon, and considering all the driving we do, you ever think about trading it in for a Prius?" Sam asks and then he ducks, laughing, as Dean's hand flies out to smack him across the back of the head.

**Purge**  
Oil patters into the plastic pan underneath her, as if carrying away countless miles of dirt and death and awkward silences.

**Mouse**  
Under a scratchy blanket and a bag of rock salt, Dean finds Mighty Mouse crammed in the far corner of the trunk, and Double M looks exactly the way Dean remembers: missing his cape and one eye, dirty and scarred; a hard campaigner, much-loved – but when he was five, his father told Dean he'd thrown the toy away, to teach his son that nobody (cartoon mouse or otherwise) would come to save the day.

** Attic**  
"Baby, do _not_ go in there," John Winchester says, and Mary elbows him to be quiet, but as the girl on the drive-in screen slowly eases open the creaky door of the attic, John tacks on: "Don't these people ever watch horror movies?"

**Second-Rate**  
The girls in the dusty towns disappear in the rear-view mirror one by one, because no living woman will ever measure up to a ghost.

**Dash**  
The engine sputters and dies for the third time, coughing consumptively, and Sam takes a deep breath, reaches out and strokes the sleek black dashboard, whispering, "Come on, girl; just this once, please, _please_..." and when he turns the key again, the engine roars smoothly to life.

** Attitude**  
Sam's been sitting on the passenger side for about ten minutes, with one foot inside and one in the wet grass, when the car suddenly utters a soft noise – old steel settling, he tells himself, even though it's a long-running joke how both of them personify the Impala, how Sam bitches she doesn't like him... and yet he could swear the car just whispered his name.

** Wisdom**  
One of these nights, in one of these overgrown cemeteries or tumbledown houses or lonely stretches of desert, one of them will not come trudging wearily back to the car.

**Sight**  
"I spy with my little eye something beginning with C," says Sam, and Dean studies the passing scenery, guessing "cow" and "cornfield" and "Cozy Kitchen billboard," before noticing that a flatbed two lanes over is piled high with coffins, and when the truck turns off the interstate at the next exit, they follow.

**Address**  
"She's not a rust bucket; she is not a junker or a jalopy or a heap," Dean says, poking a finger at the three not-quite-humans lurking and hissing where darkness meets the edge of the headlights, "and when you address my car, you address her like the lady she is – with _respect_ – or this is gonna get real ugly, real fast."

**Minute**  
With one eye on the map, Sam eases out of traffic, then double-checks Dean's scribbled coordinates in the margin of the journal – latitude and longitude, degrees and minutes all match exactly, though the car sits at the curb in front of the Happy Hooker Yarn Store; Sam's alone, but he mutters, "Dude, are you fucking with me?"

**Cotton**  
Nestled nose-in to the motel room, she sees the silhouette thrown against thin curtains and cannot tell which brother chucks his jacket over a chair, pistols placed down more carefully, next come shoulder holster, sheathed knives, handcuffs, wallet, car keys; then he yanks his tee shirt over his head, spins it into a rope and snaps it playfully, and it's Dean, she's pretty sure.****

**Claw**  
Never mind that _he's_ covered in bites and scratches; Dean's fucking Impala has four deep gouges across the passenger-side door, and Sam's positive his brother is fighting hard not to cry.

**Limit**  
"You have any idea how fast you were traveling, son?" the cop drawls, and the Impala echoes Dean's reply before he speaks it, _Not fast enough, obviously._

**Unique**  
It rises from the darkness in the shape of a man with his eyes on fire, this shape she knows of old, hands reaching to rend and rip, but she is not Mary and she is not Jessica and she has no tender splitting skin – she is steel.

** Gravity**  
"According to Dante, Hell is all downhill," Sam says, "so just put it in Neutral, and we won't even need gas."

**Yesterday**  
He probably doesn't realize what he's doing; he's just stretching his long legs after hours of driving, humming under his breath, the way a song gets stuck in your head (the Beatles especially), and he doesn't see the angry, almost guilty glare Dean shoots him before stalking into the mini-mart to pay for ten bucks of gas.

**Jungle**  
Dean's perfected the maneuver through long practice: stripping a Big Mac wrapper without lifting either hand off the wheel, and as he bites into his burger, Sam says, "Hey, there's this book you should read, by Upton Sinclair..."

**Garden**  
He comes to with his cheek deep in black earth and bruised petals; the smell is so nice that, until the howls and the gunshots begin, he doesn't remember that he ended up here after crashing through the Impala's back windshield.

** Question**  
Dean swears under his breath as the Tarot deck tumbles off the seat, spilling the Knight of Wands, Eight of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, Eight of Swords, the Chariot, the Hanged Man, the Tower, King of Pentacles, Three of Swords... even though she hasn't asked a question, or has she?

**Text**  
CAR STNX LIKE C-WEED &amp; BURND HAIR –  MECHANIC SEZ: SMETHNG U WANT 2 TELL ME, SR? (Y! DUNWICH F-ING SUX!) – MEET ME @ WHATELEY'S IN 2 HRS, BRING THE BOOK – D.

** Plastic**  
FBI Agent, Homeland Security Agent, Federal Marshall, Bikini Inspector... all these fake IDs locked safe in the Impala's glove compartment like multiple personalities hiding in one brain.

**Block**  
They feel stupid and conspicuous driving around and around the block in the middle of the night but the ninth time the car makes the counter-clockwise circuit – sure enough, between 1407 and 1409, there's a new storefront.

**Escort**  
Dean zips his fly, glancing up in time to see Tiffany swiveling the side mirror so she can slop on another coat of lip gloss, and he snarls at her, "Hey! Hands off my car!"

**Insult**  
All they know is soft chamois and well-paved roads and safe garages; and she's insulted to be parked next to these Rolls Royces and Porsches, outside the auction house.

** Blood**  
She had a theory for a while: it was the blood printed in her seat creases, on her door handles, across the dash in hand-shapes – but Sam pulled her up next to an ambulance once, and it never showed a glimmer of awareness.

** Gold**  
Ripples of gold and orange flame shimmer on the Impala like reflections in dark water, as Dean sinks wearily into the driver's seat, stinking of sweat and grave dirt.

** Spot**  
Sam steps out of the gas station rest room into the crisp autumn air, catching Dean scrubbing at something on the roof of the car – pollen or bird crap or whatever he's gone all Lady Macbeth about this time – and Sam rolls his eyes and smiles.

** Melt**  
Tearing open the bag of rock salt, Dean begins to spread it over the icy asphalt behind the Impala, as he remarks, "Hey Sammy, check it out – Minnesota's only sanctified parking lot!"

**Guilt**  
Dean's best girl, getaway car, weapon storage locker, battering ram, mullet-mobile, chick magnet, mobile home; sometimes she feels a small and awful gratitude that Mary and Jess are gone.

** Duel**  
Dean cranks the stereo, shocking Sam awake, and as his little bro sputters and spits out the plastic spoon Dean poked into his mouth, Dean busts up laughing, well aware that Winchester versus Winchester is going be brutal – and legendary.

** Stranger**  
She fills with freezing mist as a dead woman materializes behind her wheel, whispering, "I can never go home," and then the Impala's headlights flare, pinning Sam and Dean's shadows against the bridge as she roars forward at them.

** Wait**  
Dean snarks about his brother's choice of coffee as Sam climbs into the car, and somehow there must be a way to shut Sam up, but she hasn't discovered it yet, and so Sam ignores Dean and recounts the overheard conversation in the Starbucks, the story of the haunted theater, and Dean is hooked... and by her count this Wednesday, June 7th has repeated itself seventy-three times, so far.

**Glow**  
In the greenish glow cast by the dash lights, Sam's face is pale and drawn, and a steady stream of mumbled, anxious words tumble out under his breath; Dean tries to tune out his brother, but he never quite can.

**Action**  
Using a car door as a shield only works in action movies; she could have told him that, but of course she can't tell him anything, so the next bullet drills through metal and plastic, nailing Sam squarely in the arm.

**Chain**  
John Winchester never called her sweet girl, my baby, my love, never serenaded her with Whitesnake at five in the morning, and now Sam's cold, stony focus behind the wheel feels like having John back once again.

** Bitter**  
Dean watches in the rear-view mirror, watching the girl watch his brother walk away... Christ, this three-Kleenex goodbye is gonna keep happening as long as they keep hunting, and they'll keep hunting as long as they stay alive, and Sammy won't always be the one who turns his back, and walks toward the car.

** Lock**  
They lock all four doors, Dean grouses about seniority, Sam smirks that rock breaks scissors, and fair is fair; Dean's stuck with the front again, Sam's scored the back, but after a little while, it's quiet except for the tick-tick of the cooling engine and their breathing, deepening toward sleep.

**Order**  
Frowning out the window at the hamburger-headed Fiberglas creature beckoning customers into its drive-though lane, Dean grumbles, "Sammy, it's probably the low blood sugar talking, but the longer I look at the thing, the more I'm convinced there's zombie orgy going on inside that restaurant."

**Friends**  
AC/DC thunders on the stereo, Dean's palm thumping time on the steering wheel, Sam's head wedged comfortably in the crook of the door frame, and rubber kisses the road as she leaps to embrace the wind.

** Prison**  
"She doesn't like getting impounded on her best day," Dean says, and the springs of the narrow bunk scream as he plops himself down on the stained mattress, adding grimly, "now that she's possessed, she's _really_ not going to like it."

**Journal**  
Like a buddy's cuff on the shoulder, the well-work book thumps home on the Impala's back seat, but each time is a stinging slap to the brothers: the journal traveling with them, instead of their father.

**Zero**  
Eventually, her odometer will roll over to all zeroes, showing the whites of her eyes and Sam, calling her "Old Girl," (she's a _classic_, Dean clarifies), insists they ought to celebrate, commemorate, commiserate – but Dean cannot shake the sneaking fear that this moment will mark the end of their road at last.


End file.
